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Tag Archives: safety

It is a fact that some young children are born with some exceptional memories, qualities and traits right from their birth onwards. In some cases, the child remembers the happenings of his earlier life, places where he had lived and/or visited, special qualities which he possessed in his earlier life and some of which he may be possessing even now. Such qualities are generally observed in the initial stages of the life of the children and if their parents, teachers and other well-wishers have the time and the inclination to observe and follow up, the same may get developed exceptionally well, in those children. The onus in such cases is on the parents and teachers to identify, highlight such talents and give them encouragement, motivation and prominence to build further on the initial foundation received at the time of the birth. Thus it is accepted that there are some such cases, and that we must promote the observed talents suitably. However, their percentage is not very high.
But there is another matter. Can we say that a child knows about everything authentically, at that young age? Asking the children and to say that we must accept what they say for everything, appears to be a bit too far-fetched. If and when we may ask them about their choices and opinion for everything, it is possible that they may just give their views without any basis. It is like someone asking me about something which I do not know. Even then normally I may say something. Then questions like this may also arise. Even if a child wants or likes a thing which we consider as harmful or hazardous for him, should we give him. If he likes a thing too much and after eating a substantial quantity already, he wants still more, should we discourage him? Further since as a parent, we may know that the child likes a particular item, should we give it to him on our own? Should we as a parent not utilize our knowledge and experience about adverse effects of some items and condition our child accordingly and ensure his safety. Should we take that our child knows everything and we know nothing. Does it not amount to putting lot of stress on the young child? The duty of the parent is to guide the child properly, with his knowledge and experience and the inclinations of the child as observed and get them changed, if necessary, especially when the conditions are harmful and/or hazardous. It is felt that all this should be done in the overall interest of the child, and not considered in an isolated manner.
———-vijaiksharma

Whenever, some task/work is assigned to an individual or a company, meeting the quality, cost and time requirements are most important, but equally important are the safety considerations. But one seemingly innocuous thing, which is also essential from the safety point of view, is removal of all waste and left over materials from the site, after completion of the work and leaving the place clean. Even during pendency of the work, the storage of the required materials should be such that it not unsafe for anybody. While this type of work goes on, we are also engaged in our normal routine works, either fully or partly. This is more relevant for civil works, like construction and patch work repairs of roads, new building constructions, repairs to buildings on small or large scale, shops, bridges, culverts, fly overs etc. When Govt. contracts are concluded for this type of work, generally the work of leaving the place free of any debris and left over materials etc. is included in the contract. But in many cases the contractor does not bother and does not take it seriously. There have been many accidents on account of this type of negligence/carelessness. Recently in a colony, patch up repair of the roads was being done, on piecemeal basis. On one side of the repaired and opened road, substantial quantity of gravel (bajri) was left by the contractor. The children of one of the residents was going by cycle later in the evening, after it became dark, and his cycle skidded, he fell down, he was badly injured. His parents had to take him to the Hospital and he required six stitches for his injured leg. Fortunately he did not suffer head injury. In another incident, a family had a very bad case. A young person was planning to get married in next 4 months or so, and while going on one of his routine travels in the late hours his motor cycle hit against ballast (gitti) accumulated on one side of the main road, near one of the houses for repairs. He fell down very badly. But he suffered head injury in spite of helmet used by him. He was rushed to the Hospital, but after a few days he died. It was a very sad incident. In another case, in front of the entrance of one of the houses, where such repairs were carried out, the left over material, though in a small quantity, had accumulated into a solid heap and acted as a serious obstruction. It was not removed, in spite of numerous requests and had to be removed by the occupant of the house, under his own arrangements. There have been several accidents due to such carelessness, in workshops, boiler houses, electrical installations, storage godowns etc. Hence safety considerations must be uppermost in all endeavours and all preventive measures must be taken seriously. But this measure of insisting on storing required materials considering the safety parameters, and leaving the work place clean after the work completion, must be followed very rigorously, under all circumstances and for everybody.

Customer is said to be the King. If he is not satisfied in any way, he may not visit your shop or patronize your product and create & spread a bad image by word of mouth. Normally customers go to the nearest or nearby shops for purchases. The customers who are nearby may patronize your business. Therefore, automatically one loses several but not all customers, living in far off places. Generally, it has been experienced that locating some particular item(s) and billing of the items, take a lot of time in the malls. Also, some billing counters are kept closed as per requirement, some are closed in between, when people are even waiting in the queue. So a person wanting to purchase 1 or 2 items feels discouraged to go to a mall. He prefers to go to an owner managed small shop for quick disposal. The malls do not have personal touch. They do not recognize their loyal customers by face. A small shop owner welcomes his customers with a smile and sometimes there is a friendly chat even. Therefore, malls may lose such sensitive customers. Customers want honest dealings only & no cheating at all. But in some shops, to avoid financial loss to the owners, some old items are got repacked & sold out, & thus the safety of the customers is thrown to the winds. Some products do not even carry expiry dates. Sometimes a customer is not told about the product expiry date and he gets totally misled. When there is carelessness in dealings, the PDC’s are not honoured & the customers are taken for a ride (when a customer has to visit several times to collect the item), the customers will not go to such shops in future. The businessmen sometimes forget that they can earn more by ensuring periodic visits of the customers & not by just one first visit only. The vegetables & fruits are daily use items, for which the Customers will go to those shops only, which supply quality goods & are easily approachable. When a vendor comes in the lane of the house & his quality and dealings are good, he will get customers. Far off places will not be patronized.

A business which forces customers to visit again, as per the desire of the shop owner, will lose the customers. Some businessmen may give some small discounts for future visits, with no obvious major advantages to the customers, thinking that these will make them come again. But the matter is not so simple. There are many factors which determine such repeat visits of the customers. Many times knowingly and sometimes unknowingly, small quantity of poor quality product is mixed or given alongside, without customer’s knowledge. When it is found after reaching home, neither the product is exchanged nor the mistake is acknowledged. This leads to loss of customers. I purchased a tube from a medical shop and next day I wanted to return it and buy something else in exchange. The shop keeper refused and said that I might have taken out some medicine from inside the tube, as the tube is made of plastic. As a matter of fact I had not done so & had no intentions of doing anything like that. From then on, I do not go to his shop at all. I will go without the medicine rather than go to his shop. There is one grocery shop, which charges exactly the MRP amount printed on the product, though almost all others give some rebate to the customers, which may be around 5 %. While not agreeing for any amount of rebate, he told me in an arrogant manner to take the item or leave it. I have stopped going there too. Even for some normal quality products, when a customer wants to exchange to some other piece of the same product or some other product, somewhere it is not allowed or there are stringent and difficult rules and timings or the customer is made to wait for a long time for getting attention, causing inconvenience to him. In such cases also, the business loses the customers.

There is a narration in Mahabharata epic about Arjun, concentrating on the eye of the fish as seen on the reflection in water. Yes, it was a case essentially needing deep and single point concentration, for getting certain success. But this type of concentration, in the opinion of the blogger, is not needed in many of the normal happenings in life. Any worker, instructor, driver, reader, student, writer, police man or security guard etc. may have some internal & external disturbances, but does need concentration to a limited extent for his work. A vehicle driver should concentrate on all rules/problems/activities connected with driving the vehicle, as well as on various things & activities happening on the road at that time. He should keep his thoughts on other topics away from him. When some particular activity/work is going on, then as soon as a person gets relevant information which may affect it, he should analyze & use it immediately without keeping it waiting. During piloting of an aeroplane, when the pilot gets some important information, his attention should be immediately drawn to it, for taking immediate appropriate action. The concentration of a designer should be wide enough for understanding, anticipating & highlighting all aspects/problems during manufacture & use of that product.
By deeply concentrating on the present work, a person may perform the work satisfactorily with minimum mistakes, but he is not vigilant of the events happening around him at that time. Such a person may be working under dangerous external situations/circumstances and he may even become a victim or a cause of accident(s). Such a person should be given assurance of full safety from outside hazards and he should feel that someone is worrying about his safety. Thus a person solely engaged in his work, concentrating on a particular topic under consideration, but not remembering that he has also to do some other works like writing an official letter or making a telephone call or visiting an office may cause problems in day to day working. Also in case he does remember it, it means that he is not concentrating fully on his work. We may need different levels of concentration for different works. The limitation of concentration may be adjusted as per the need. We should consider concentration on a topic and taking up other works together, meaning thereby to have concentration, but still not have it fully. It is said that today’s world is that of multi-tasking and that people cannot concentrate or focus on a single goal only. Multi-tasking involves change of focus and reduced reaction time. But more success appears to come from single minded devotion, concentration and passion, since continuous concentration is capable of overcoming many obstacles in our life. Also it is understood that our brain can do one task at a time efficiently. History is replete with many cases of success, where the persons adopted this approach. Also our thoughts are very important in life. We should concentrate on our positive, encouraging and stable thoughts, with negative thoughts not finding any place in our mind. Interest in the work & desire to continue to learn, automatically help in getting concentration on the work. Sometimes when we open our books in student life or technical papers for study & disposal in work life, we are unable to continue due to our being tired, trying to do several things at the same time, lack of interest or inability to concentrate on the subject. If we get involved in imaginary day-dreaming, thoughts of friends or family or other subjects or get restlessness or feelings of tension, we will not be able to complete the works satisfactorily. Meditation increases the ability for better concentration, reduces anxiety & stresses in spite of various factors, by keeping a person away from other disturbances. But it is considered that while doing meditation also, a person should be vigilant enough about external disturbances & dangers & internal depressive factors.

Some individuals and organizations endear themselves by their verbal and written responses, communications and actions and leave a deep impact on us. It was the year 2003, when my self and my wife were visiting our son and his family in California, USA. Our son made a tour request to the plant of M/S New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) in Fremont, California. The Tour coordinator Ms. Teresa Marisco confirmed the tour for 3 persons for Aug 27, 2003 at 1000 A .M. She also gave some suggestions like wearing closed toe shoes (optional) and drew our attention to some other requirements like arriving ten minutes earlier, cautioning about traffic, intimating if unable to attend, providing safety glasses and smoking being prohibited etc. But due to some last minute health emergency problem in the family, on Aug 26, 2003 my son made a request to reschedule the visit, as per his e mail dt. Aug 26, 2003. It was nice of the tour coordinator to reschedule our visit on Sept 02, 2003 as per her e mail dt. Aug 29, 2003, but she added one more line “Hope things are better with you and your family.” Her concern for us and our health touched a chord within us and we were overwhelmed by the human touch. She also enquired if the rescheduled tour date was OK for us. When we finally visited the company on Sep 02, 2003 and met the tour coordinator, we found her a very good human being. We thanked her profusely for her expression of concern as also for the excellent tour arrangements, explanations and the coverage, in this world-class quality cars and trucks manufacturing facility. We returned deeply impressed with the entire set-up, the tour, and the question and answer session.